This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.
We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great men - the lights of the world, and of the present age - have given their sanction.
Age | Character | Influence | Men | Opinion | Power | Present | Principles | Public | World |
Educate your children of self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future lives and crimes from society.
Character | Children | Control | Evil | Future | Habit | Passion | Prejudice | Self | Self-control | Society | Will |
Alexandre Vinet, fully Alexandre Rodolphe Vinet
Religion finds the love of happiness and the principles of duty separated in us; and its mission - its masterpiece is, to reunite them.
Character | Duty | Love | Mission | Principles | Religion | Happiness |
Thomas Arnold, aka Thomas "Tom" Arnold the Younger
All calm inquiry conducted among those who have their main principles of judgment in common, leads, if not to an approximation of views, yet, at least, to an increase of sympathy.
Inquiry | Judgment | Principles | Sympathy | Wisdom |
If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we work upon bronze, time will efface it; if we build temples, they will crumble into dust; but if we work upon immortal souls, if we imbue them with just principles of action, with fear of wrong and love of right, we engrave on those tables something which no time can obliterate, and which will brighten and brighten through all eternity.
Action | Character | Eternity | Fear | Love | Principles | Right | Time | Will | Work | Wrong |
Successful parenthood is built on three great principles which cut deep into the foundations of a structure, support and stimulate the right formation of habit in the building of life. They are love, discipline, and security. Without all these, a child's life is stunted from the very beginning.
Beginning | Discipline | Habit | Life | Life | Love | Principles | Right | Security | Wisdom |
Man's knowledge of science has clearly outstripped his knowledge of man. Our only hope of making the atom servant rather than master lies in education, in a broad liberal education where each student within his capacity can free himself from trammels of dogmatic prejudice and apply his educational accouterment to besetting social and human problems.
Capacity | Education | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Prejudice | Problems | Science | Wisdom |
Carry religious principles into common life, and common life will lose its transitoriness. The world passes away. The things are seen as temporal. Soon business, with all its cares and anxieties, the whole “unprofitable stir and fever of the world” will be to us a thing of the past. But religion does something better than sigh and moan over the perishableness of earthly things. It finds in them the seeds of immortality.
Better | Business | Immortality | Life | Life | Past | Principles | Religion | Will | Wisdom | World |
Much of our ignorance is of ourselves. Our eyes are full of dust. Prejudice blinds us.
Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.
Not a tenth of us who are in business are doing as well as we could if we merely followed the principles that were known to our grandfathers.
Business | Principles | Wisdom | Business |
Retribution is one of the grand principles in the divine administration of human affairs; a requital is imperceptible only to the willfully unobservant. There is everywhere the working of the everlasting law of requital; man always gets as he gives.
Administration | Law | Man | Principles | Wisdom |
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
If I were asked what single qualification was necessary for one who has the care of children, I should say patience - patience with their tempers, with their understandings, with their progress. It is not brilliant parts or great acquirements which are necessary for teachers, but patience to go over first principles again and again; steadily to add a little every day; never to be irritated by willful or accidental hindrance.
Care | Children | Day | Little | Patience | Principles | Progress | Wisdom |
Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, and moral and intellectual culture, our fathers found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of ascent, was adjustable on principles of the common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality.
Authority | Capacity | Civilization | Culture | Government | Man | Mankind | Morality | People | Principles | Progress | Reason | Redemption | Security | Society | Title | Wisdom |
Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.
Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |